


Down the Needle and Thread (as the blood runs red)

by estel_willow, mandsangelfox



Series: At Our Swiftest Speed [6]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Feels, Gen, Twin Connection, mentions of being awake during surgery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-03
Updated: 2015-05-03
Packaged: 2018-03-28 18:50:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,768
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3865837
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/estel_willow/pseuds/estel_willow, https://archiveofourown.org/users/mandsangelfox/pseuds/mandsangelfox
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It had occurred to her that she might have been chasing a ghost, a shadow.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Down the Needle and Thread (as the blood runs red)

As the world turned and carried on spinning one Pietro Maximoff was trapped somewhere between life and death when really he should have been dead. The bullets had ripped through him and he'd remembered falling. The darkness had crept in quickly and had soon consumed his every thought save for one.

_Wanda._

Dark, cold, alone, these were the thoughts which filled his mind in the absence of his sister's name. His body felt heavy, limbs weighed down as if made of lead, but it wasn't until the creeping tendrils of red wrapped around him like an all too familiar embrace that Pietro's body responded. 

It wasn't much, just a trickle of blood, but it was enough. Enough to stop the Doctor from cutting any deeper, the pain a fleeting thought replaced by the confusion which filled every recess of his mind, the same mind which for all its awareness was unable to rouse his body to do something more than just lie there and let the world pass him by. 

He was alive, barely, but alive.

Pietro could hear voices, muttering, familiar phrases being passed around and he knew he was in the hands of doctors but what he didn't expect was to feel every single incision that accompanied the removal of bullets.

And he screamed, but to the outside world he was silent.

Wanda could feel the cold floor against her feet but it didn't matter as she moved through the building, trusting her instinct to take her to where she needed to be, her mind open and reaching, searching with every fibre of her being to find the source of that flicker. It had occurred to her that she might have been chasing a ghost, a shadow. Spirits often couldn't rest if there was unfinished business or if a loved one couldn't let them go, but Wanda was desperate to believe that it was more than that. It had to be. It had to be more than that. She refused to believe that it was over. Not when she could feel it. Not when she could feel _him_.

Her movements were hurried, her powers around her like a magenta aura, tendrils sneaking out and upsetting doors and surveillance cameras without her consciously intending on doing so. She stopped only when she hit a long corridor that she didn't recognise and she felt a pain like nothing she had ever experienced rip its way through her. She fell to her knees, catching her weight on her hands, trying to draw in a breath past the searing in her chest, trying to think past the swirling thoughts from the world around her that were trying to climb into her mind. 

Steve had been pretty hot on Pietro's heels and as the medical team attended to him he noticed the way in which the entire facility seemed to be coming to life but it wasn't until he saw a flash of brunette hair rounding a corner that he realised who it was.

"Wanda," he muttered before picking up his pace, to try and catch up with her before she got sight of Pietro in his current predicament. She was already screwing with the doors and cameras as it was without being surprised by the sight of her brother being operated on.

Not that he needed to worry because as he rounded the same corner Wanda collapsed to the ground and concern soon creased his brow as Steve hurried to her side. He instinctively reached out as sometimes all you needed was a human touch, blue eyes seeking out Wanda's in the hopes of making eye contact and holding it.

"Wanda? You okay?"

There was a touch, a presence, warm and comforting and caring and _there_ but it was the wrong one. It wasn't the one she needed to ground herself, to pull her thoughts back from the brink, to draw her to the present and not to the twisting voices of the universe that ripped through her mind when she wasn't concentrating, when she wasn't focused. It wasn't right. He wasn't right but he was all she had. 

The moment Steve Rogers' hands touched her arms, her mind was filled with images of Pietro's body on a table, of Dr Cho with a scalpel blade in her hand slicing into his chest, a cacophony of flashing images like a picture book accompanied with Steve's disgust at what he was seeing and then the images of blood, of bleeding. Corpses didn't bleed. A nearby camera sparked as the cables at the back were forcibly wrenched out of the machine by an unseen force and a nearby yellow alarm was silenced before it could go off, Wanda's powers warping around them both. 

There was a fury in her, a burning anger at the fact that Dr Cho was going to hurt her brother more, to defile him in his death in a way that he didn't deserve to be. Helen Cho who she had _saved_ and who repaid her with an action such as that? That anger burned low in her stomach and was still there when she lifted her head to finally look up at Steve through wild, dishevelled hair but dissolved when her eyes met his. Blue. The wrong blue. 

"He is alive," she said, her accent thick with emotions she couldn't explain, an anger she couldn't define and a hope she dare not put any stock in. Hope didn't do anyone any good. Hope got people killed. Hope created broken hearts. "I need to see him."

Steve was all too aware the effect Wanda's powers were having on the world around him and he could understand why it might scare people, but if she was something to fear then so was he. He was the same as her, a lab experiment, but just because somebody made you something you didn't think possible wasn't enough reason for Fury to mistrust and assume the worst. The Maximoff siblings had just been so scared and angry with the world and Strucker had used that. 

"And you will," Steve promised. "But first I need you to do something for me, Wanda. I need you to breathe and try to calm down. Can you do that for me?"

Wanda's jaw ticked as she was told to calm down, the mere suggestion to her seemed ludicrous: how could she calm down knowing that her brother was alive somewhere here, alone, without her? Why should she do such a thing when he was nearly butchered? These people had promised to protect her, to be worth her putting her trust in and once again it would seem that she- 

There was that pain again, brutal and breath-taking and she let out a soft sound, the heel of one hand pressing against her chest as if that would alleviate the suffering she could feel. The ground around them shook. She could feel the worry and fear of various minds around her, whirring thoughts and panicked voices, a discordant sound that wouldn't leave her be, that wouldn't hush or be silent, that she couldn't shut the doors on. 

She nodded, eyes tightly shut and lips twisted in a grimace of pain, both hers and- and Pietro's. She knew it was his. She took in a deep breath and tried to narrow the world. _Listen to my voice, Wanda_ she remembered Pietro telling her. _Just me. Listen to me. Drown out the world._

Steve wasn't entirely sure what was going on but it was clearly happening and Wanda was feeling it. And whilst he may not understand exactly he could sympathise because he knew a little about what Wanda was feeling right now. More than she might imagine. 

"That's it," Steve murmured reassuringly as he watched the clear struggle taking place. "You're doing well." A brief glance around revealed that the electrics were no longer fritzing which was a definite improvement.

Little did he know but the prone figure of Pietro had a lot more going on to it than he could see with his eyes, he was racing thoughts and panic, unsettled and not at all happy with the fact he couldn't move. He felt trapped and Pietro hated that feeling and ever since the bombing he'd never been able to sit still, but it had been exacerbated by Strucker's experiments. 

_Wanda_

She was close, he could tell, and he just needed to reach out that bit more.

Wanda's head snapped up, the slight calm composure she had regained disappearing in an instant, shattering as she heard Pietro's voice echo in her thoughts. He was close, she could feel him, that beating sensation she had grown used to returning to the depths of her chest. Her fingers flexed on the floor, a sudden restlessness buzzing under her skin.

_I'm here_ she told him, trying to reach out with her powers, to curl her thoughts around his, to tell him that she was there, that she knew, she knew he needed her. _I'm here. I'm trying to find you._

"Captain, please-" Wanda finally asked, tucking her hair behind her ear. "Where is he? He needs me."

"He's in surgery," Steve answered. "When Helen realised he was still alive she called in a medical team and they're doing everything they can to stabilise him." He gently moved his hands until he closed them around Wanda's waist and he helped the young woman to her feet as he got the feeling that if he let go then she might not be able to support herself. 

One of the medical team frowned at the reading on a nearby machine. "His heartbeat just got faster."

"What?" The doctor holding the scalpel which was in the process of removing the bullets from the young man's body said. "That's not possible."

"Well the machines don't lie."

The doctor shook his head. "Well regardless of that we need to get the rest of these bullets out and assess the damage, that's our first priority." A moment later the scalpel went back to its work.

It didn't take long for Wanda to hear a familiar voice in her head yelling obscenities in their mother tongue, the sheer frustration felt by the speedster clear as no matter how awake and aware he was of Wanda and what was happening to him his body refused to cooperate.

Wanda let out an agonised cry at the pain in Pietro's voice, legs giving out and she would have fallen if not for Steve's arm around her waist. She wanted to chide him for his words, for speaking of Dr Cho like a friend when she was willing to butcher her brother's body for science instead of allowing Wanda to mourn him properly. She refused to accept that if that had happened he may not have been saved, perhaps they would not have known that he was not dead...

"They are hurting him," she told Steve through gritted teeth, helpless frustration bubbling up inside of her that caused her eyes to glow and that familiar red mist to appear around her fingertips. She wanted to stop them from what they were doing, wherever they were, she wanted to stop them from hurting him. From hurting them both. "They have to be stopped." 

_I'm coming_ she told him in their native tongue, trying to send a balm through to his mind, to calm and soothe _I'll be there soon, brother._

Hurting him? Steve was trying to make sense of that, trying to wrap his head around the fact that Wanda spoke as if she knew what was happening. That wasn't possible though, but then again they were twins and once when Bucky had been seeing twins he'd mentioned something about a link. Of course Bucky had accompanied it with a particular smile and a glint in his eyes but with Wanda it was different it was more... visceral. 

"I don't think that's their intent," Steve said with certainty. "They're having to remove the bullets and that does involve cutting them out of him. I mean, he shouldn't be able to feel-" And then cut off, realisation dawning on him. "Oh god, he can feel it."

Way sharper than people gave him credit for.

"C'mon," Steve muttered as he guided Wanda in the direction the medical team had taken Pietro.

_Hurry,_ Pietro all but pleaded in a tone he would later deny if asked.

Wanda's feet moved as swiftly as Steve's did as they all but ran through the hallways to the medical bay where they had taken Pietro when they had been advised that he wasn't as dead as they had first thought. The doors to the operating theatre burst open without being touched as soon as Wanda and Steve approached, the former standing on her own volition, an anger twisting in her eyes at the surgeon and medical staff. She was held back only by the knowledge that they were needed to put him back together. 

_I'm here_ she told him, moving towards the bed to touch him. 

"You can't be in here," the head surgeon said through his mask, looking absolutely terrified at the fact that the doors had opened seemingly of their own volition. Everyone had heard about what the Maximoffs could do and the team started to sweat a little, their fear of the Enhanced bleeding through. 

Wanda flinched as their fear crossed into her mind, pressing against her thoughts. "You do not tell me where I can and cannot be," she told him, looking to Steve for confirmation. "You are hurting him. You have to stop."

When Wanda touched Pietro the nearby heart monitor made a rather loud beeping sound as if he were reacting to her very presence.

_Sister, it's dark._ That voice shared. _And cold._

"Trust me," Steve began. "This is not a discussion you wanna be having, doc." He gestured towards Pietro. "Your patient can feel everything you're doing. I don't know how that's even possible, but until a few moments ago we all thought he was dead so really that doesn't surprise me as much as it should."

One of the nurses assisting the surgeons frowned. "We're not hurting him, we're trying to save his life. What would you have us do? Leave the bullets in him?"

Wanda's eyes cut to the nurse that had spoken. "You are hurting him," she repeated, voice low and almost dangerous, accent thick and that angry growl barely contained. "You are not a very good care taker if you cannot tell this. Perhaps you should not be in here." 

_I know,_ she told him, her hand finally closing properly around his bare ankle, thumb smoothing over the skin. He felt like ice. _It will not be much longer. They need to take the bullets from you so that you can heal, Pietro. I can ask them to sedate you- but you would not be able to hear me. But I'm here. Can you feel me?_

"I don't know what you expect us to do, Cap," the surgeon said, voice trembling a little because he didn't get paid enough to deal with pissed off Enhanced storming into his theatre and telling him what he was doing was wrong. "We need to get the bullets out. We can give him additional sedation, but," he indicated to the IV line that was going into Pietro's arm, "we are already giving him something to make him sleep and to stop him from feeling any pain."

Steve knew Wanda was frightening the medical team, they were only human after all and fear seemed to be the first place most people jumped when faced with something new and unfamiliar. "I can see that," he said with a nod. "But you have to remember that Pietro isn't like your ordinary patient. He's fast which means everything else about him is fast including his metabolic rate. Did you take that into account?"

The glance between the surgeons and the nurses revealed that they hadn't.

_I can,_ Pietro answered. _Stay with me, Wanda. Don't leave me alone with them. I don't trust them._

The nurse who had felt the lash of Wanda's tongue scowled, eyes narrowing. Enhanced humans, who did they think they were? No wonder Fury wanted to know what made them tick if they all acted this way.

"Start increasing the dose," the surgeon demanded, snapping the anaesthesiologist out of his stupor. The other nodded and started working on changing the dials and increasing the volumes of drugs being pumped into the speedster, internally cursing himself for not thinking that earlier. There was a wave of guilt from him that hit Wanda like a truck at the thought he had had a hand in hurting a patient he was meant to be caring for. 

His eyes lifted to meet Wanda's. "Can you tell me when he stops feeling the pain?" he asked. Wanda nodded, distracted only by the thoughts of the nurse who had challenged her. 

"She needs to leave. She has no place here." Her words were directed at Steve. "She believes that Fury is right to try and cut my brother open to understand what he is." There was a look in her eyes, a fierce protection and a promise: if she was not removed, Wanda would remove her. 

_I won't. I promise. I'm here forever. You know that. Tell me when the pain subsides, they are going to try and help you now. Help you rest._

Steve caught the look between Wanda and the nurse, it was a look he'd seen before and one he knew all too well. "It might be best if you leave the room," he said softly but firmly to the nurse. "Trust me, it's better you do." It wasn't that he was pandering but rather doing his best to limit the damage and contain the situation and if it meant removing one nurse for her own safety then so be it. Steve could put himself in the nurse's shoes, but Wanda couldn't, not right now and maybe not ever. That was the thing about people they were all very different.

"Fine," the nurse bit out. "But not because of her, Cap. I'm leaving for you."

"Which I appreciate," Steve offered with a small smile.

_Forever,_ Pietro echoed. _Nearly messed that one up, didn't I?_ There was a stretch of silence as the dosage rose and he started to feel the darkness creeping in on him again. _It's getting darker, Wanda. I think whatever they're doing is working, but I don't know if I'll be able to stay with you._

The moment after the nurse left, there was a line of tension across Wanda's shoulders that seemed to loosen a little bit and she nodded at the anaesthesiologist. "It's working," she told him matter-of-factly. "He is falling asleep." It felt different to the way he had been ripped from her before, this was more peaceful, softer. Akin to the way it felt when they slept. 

"We should get back to work, Miss," the surgeon said, trying not to say anything that might cause her to react in a way that would harm anyone in the room. "You really shouldn't be in here."

"I am not going anywhere, I have made a promise to my brother, Doctor. I will be keeping it." _Yes,_ Wanda responded to Pietro _But we will discuss that when you are better. For now, you must sleep and let them heal you. I will be here when you wake up._

Steve let out a breath he hadn't been aware of holding when it seemed that Wanda was calming down and Pietro was responding positively to the drugs. 

"Do what you need to save him," he said after a moment. "And keep me updated." They already had Wanda to contend with the last thing they needed was him in there getting in their way, especially when Steve still needed to wrap his head around everything that had just happened.

He touched Wanda's shoulder very briefly, "If you need anything you know where I am," before simply letting himself out of the operating room.

_See you when I wake,_ Pietro offered until finally he gave in and he slipped under, letting the drugs work their magic and drown out the surgery.

Wanda didn't move from where she was standing at the foot of Pietro's bed during the whole surgical process, watching with both trepidation and rapt fascination as they worked quickly to remove the bullets from where they had embedded themselves into his body. There were so many, the chinking sound of bullet after bullet falling into the metal dish became a repetitive sound that Wanda wanted to drown out somehow but knowing that with each metal slug that was removed, Pietro would be healing faster than even the doctors would be able to explain and then he would be back beside her. 

She spoke with the anaesthesiologist, telling him when Pietro was rousing slightly to ensure that he stayed under and oblivious to the pain that should have been coursing through him as the surgeon dug underneath his skin and within his core to remove the bullets that had caused so much damage that he had died. Pietro had died, Wanda knew that in her very being and so didn't know how it was that he hadn't left her, but she wasn't going to question it. Not now. Not when he needed her to be the strong one. 

She barely noticed Steve leaving but noticed his absence when she turned to look at him and he wasn't there. She had hoped he would stay but she supposed he had seen enough of this when he was a soldier and did not want to watch. 

It was going to be okay. And when they were done and had sewn up the damage that they had wrought over and above where he had been shredded by the gun attached to a S.H.I.E.L.D craft, she followed them to the room that they put him in to be monitored as he came out of the anaesthetic and where they could check on him to ensure that he was going to be alright. 

She had promised him that she would be there when he woke up, and so as she settled on a chair beside his bed, curled up and looking smaller and younger than she had any right to considering the sights that they had seen in their short lives and the chaos that had been left in their wake of late, Wanda just waited.


End file.
